TGS 09: Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce Hands-on

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Hack and slash with three of your online friends.

By Greg Miller

Dynasty Warriors has mostly been a single-player experience. You run out there, beat the hell out of hundreds of bad guys, and level-up like there's no tomorrow. When Strikeforce came to the PSP in April, it added in some ad-hoc multiplayer, but now Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is coming to the PlayStation 3 and letting you team up with three online players to tackle the game.

Even though it's not a straight port, all of the PSP quests and content are making the jump to the PS3 along with a slew of new stuff. There are more monsters, more than 40 characters, new DLC, and more.

Bring the thunder.

One of the cool things is that instead of making you go it alone in missions if you didn't have three friends -- like the PSP version did -- the PS3 rendition of Strikeforce will pump in three AI characters to help you. If you feel like it, you can order these guys around so that they're attacking officers, footsoliders, or so on. This is going to be critical as the game gets harder.

In terms of gameplay, Strikeforce plays like most of the Dynasty Warriors games before it. You run out there pulling off Musou attacks and fury moves while earning XP and having a good time. You can equip items such as chi and orbs to make the attacks all the more powerful and rewarding.

A nice feature is the fact that friends can pop into your game and help you out whenever you want. If all the co-op play has you down, you can choose to go into the competitive two-on-two mode. You can even chat and text with your buds!

Friends forever.

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is set for a 2010 release and is packing a system exclusive. If you pick it up on the PlayStation 3, you'll be able to get missions and weapons from some Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 characters, while Xbox 360 players will get the same goodness from Warriors of Orochi 2 players.